Madame Gervaisais is the widow of a man who filled for years an important office under the government by dint of small gifts of precision and punctuality, being in himself an insignificant person. His position and wealth, and the beauty and superior endowments of his wife, attracted men of mark to the house, and her _salon_ was long one of the most sought in Paris. Her marriage had not been a happy one: the intellectual resources in which she has sought compensation have been insufficient, although she has never tried more exciting distractions, and at thirty-seven she finds herself free, rich, still handsome, with one child, delicate and slow of development, born after ten years of wedlock, the spring of her heart and hopes broken from the long pressure of conjugal despotism and unkindness, her health enfeebled to a degree which makes it advisable for her to spend a winter in Rome. This is the _status quo_ at the opening of the history. Her life in Rome is told almost day by day, affording opportunity for the most detailed descriptions of places and customs, times and seasons, festivals and ceremonies: these are given with extreme, scrupulous fidelity and an accurate choice of words, but they have not the magic touch which brings unvisited scenes before you or revives half-forgotten ones with the freshness of things seen yesterday. This is strange, as the impressions, the sensations of mind and body, produced upon a stranger by Rome are wonderfully conveyed. "She was astonished at the refinement and acuteness of perception which she had acquired since coming thither.... She remembered a glass of water which she had drunk at the door of a little cafe on one of the first evenings, and which had seemed the most delicious draught she had ever tasted. It struck her that warm countries must possess all sorts of little felicities of soil and climate unknown in colder ones, an enchanted _aqua felice_ trickling everywhere. And day by day she felt the nothings of her life assuming an intensity of pleasure and enjoyment that nothings have when one is in love." "In the gardens of the Villa Borghese on those spring days she had hours of singular well-being--a sort of sweet oppression, a relaxation which made her happy: they were days whose temperature was like a tepid bath, with warm whiffs of acacia and orange blossoms; a dusty sky; a sun which was only an orange glow; a smothering of the sound of the distant bells; a song of disconnected notes, as if the birds were tired; an atmosphere where a line which might be taken for the flight of an insect proved to be a drop of rain, which fell every five minutes without wetting you." Her life, which is very solitary, consists principally of sightseeing, study, the care and companionship of her child, and the revery which hangs about existence in Italy like an exhalation from the ground. Madame Gervaisais, brought up of course a French Catholic, has gradually